


Firework

by sigynrising (snowangelaziraphale)



Category: Mythology, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, F/M, Ireland, Irish, Irish Language, Logyn - Freeform, Loki - Freeform, Magic, Magical Realism, Mythology - Freeform, Norse, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Sigyn - Freeform, St. Patrick's Day, Urban Fantasy, Urban Magic, myths, teenagers are so dramatic, writes the teenager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 10:10:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3688269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowangelaziraphale/pseuds/sigynrising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wands that charge your phone, illegal busking, underage drinking and talking graffiti. A pink-haired girl and a redhead boy head home after a day out, and maybe things get a little bit out of hand. </p>
<p>A modern fantasy re-imagining of Loki and Sigyn running wild through the streets of Dublin, Ireland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Firework

**Author's Note:**

> I will fall off of my seat in shock if anyone ever reads this random bit of fluff I tapped out, but I'll throw it up here anyway!

It’s a kaleidoscope. A dreamcatcher. A whirling, smashing frenzy, a cacophony, an explosion of colour and screams and fire hexes flashing through the air, snakes and dragons tumbling and crashing and chasing after one another in a tangling mess. An emerald green forest of flags and banners, feet thundering against the ground to the beat of the bass line, the busker wild eyed and laughing, voice magically amplified to whip through the crowd. Dozens of shops crowd close and peer over each other’s shoulder for a better look- the cobblestone streets are littered with wrinkled aluminium cans and one-off Flameless Fireworks, those that managed to light the sky before the Gardaí charged. The smell lingers, gunpowder and danger and fairy dust.

“Come on Dublin, _fucking sing!”_

The singer is young and euphoric, acrid air teasing the flames of his hair into wild clumps and beating colour into his cheeks. He doesn’t bother to scan for police before he flings his hands forwards, shrieking with glee when tiny golden lights shoot out. They infect the crowd, dragging loners into the circle and setting them spinning with strangers, blushing but spluttering with laughter. His voice rises with his illusions, firing light and colour into the plaza as the sunlight darkens and slants. Evening’s falling, but no one’s stopping.

A stray globe skids to a halt in the heart of the heaving crowd that clogs the veins of Temple Bar. It’s caught in a candyfloss net. The girl snorts and reaches into her hair to untangle it, drags at her hair tie and shakes out the mess, flings her head over and runs a hand over her scalp. Curls drip through her fingertips and tint her vision pink. When she tosses it back, the mass of it falls to tickle mischievously at the exposed skin of her waist. The little sphere is safely cradled in her other hand, snug and heatless and smelling vaguely of honey. She brings it to her lips and kisses it gently, laughing when the singer jumps visibly as though electrocuted. When he catches her eye his smile grows impossibly wider and he tilts his head back as though willing each note of his song to reach her.

She waves.

It’s a hell of a party and the whole city’s invited- every citizen, expat, tourist and curiosity. Americans, good-natured and curious. Germans, smiling and generous. Spaniards, dark eyed and watchful and swearing as a clump of them bursts apart, flitting away from the band of Gardaí shouldering their way through.

“Hey! You, the joker with the illusions- down here, now!”

The lights wink out, the song collapses and the crowd boos. The boy clicks his fingers, evaporates his stacks and flings himself around the corner away from the commotion. He’s followed, uniformed legs cycling furiously as the Public Order Unit makes itself known. The spectators start to bitch and complain loudly. A boy of about fifteen yells and thrashes as he’s dragged by the scruff of his neck away from the square.

“Hey! Hey, he’s only a kid! He’s a kid, leave him!”

Outraged yells make hot pursuit, camera phones are whipped out and protective charms invoked until the boy is ill and faintly glowing with good wishes.

Tourists and denizens alike begin to shout and grumble as they’re shoved away with explosive charms, dancing instinctively back from the harmless sparks the policemen shower the ground with. The girl frowns, hops up onto a stone ledge and takes out her own phone, opens Snapchat and calls up the video recorder. Aiming it at her own face she beams cheesily at the camera, the diamond at her nose winking in the glare of the setting sun.

“Loki, if you’re stupid enough to stop running to check your Snapchat, then you deserve everything you get. Since I know you are- _go tapaidh, go tapaidh!”_

She taps the side of the screen to carry the spell, the speed spell that will hopefully carry him safely away from a trip in a paddy wagon and a night in a cell.

She’s done all she can, hops down from the low wall and thinks she might see if there’s anyone she knows in the cherry red pub on the corner. There are all sorts out on Paddy’s Day. People are beginning to tug portable speakers out of battered rucksacks, to fill the air with song once again as accented voices begin to shout about Dublin’s fair city and it’s pretty, pretty girls. They don’t sound half so nice as Loki did, she thinks.

Navigating the streets is an art form of itself- the shops are all closed of course, the ones that hawk acid wash denim robes and industrial chic, locally crafted wands. One in particular catches her eye as she passes, a flash of raspberry she thinks for a moment is a reflection of her own hair. It’s a strip of oak brushed and spelled to look like corrugated metal, crusted with sequins and spangled lovehearts. Tacky and cheap, with a dodgy-looking inbuilt iPhone charger. She loves it.

She’s still wriggling into gaps in the tightly bunched crowd, trying to squeeze through like the fumes of boozy breath and cigarette smoke that permeate it. She might be small but she’s not a wisp, and she loses her celebratory green scarf in the struggle.

“Nards,” she mutters.

When she hears her phone alert ping, she doesn’t dare check it. She first adjusts her course for the bank of this river of people, strikes out for the edge and hits the lip of the path despite the pushes of the defiant current. She takes her phone into her hand and her lower lip between her teeth, savouring the tack of cheap lipgloss against her tongue. She has a text.

**They’ll never take me alive! Thanks for the spell btw. Where u? Meet me at the comic shop xx**

He’d added about five heart eyed emojis, and she swats at the glitter that wafted from her phone. Fucking loser.

The streets stink of piss and imported beers, and someone’s daubed a crudely drawn leprechaun against the wall of the arch she’s walking through. It skips a little jig and tips it’s hat to her as she passes, chattering away in some hideous approximation of an Irish accent.

“Begorra begorra lass! Let’s drown the shamrock!”

She takes aim and shoots at the painted bricks, water streaming thickly from her fingertips and washing away the eyesore’s mouth. That shuts him up, thankfully, and she ignores the vicious looks it shoots her as she ducks back onto the main street. The city council has transfigured the water of the Liffey into shamrocks this year, high and thick enough to rise almost above the banks and level with the street. It’s tempting to run across the lush-looking carpet, and some are doing exactly that. Apparently, law enforcement is picking it’s battles.

She finds Loki outside Forbidden Planet, suckling a bottle of Miller and jabbing at his iPod. His ears are filled with music, a tiny hex depositing the sound directly into his ears. She’d taught him that, had found the spell on Instagram, and she’s happy to see him use it. So happy that she breathes into her fingertips and sends her own magic his way, interrupting whatever songs he’s listening to with a shrill whistle. He lets out a shocked grunt and rubs at his ears. She thinks the expression he’s making is supposed to be a glare, but he’s not very good at it.

“Ow. You’re mean. You’re a mean lady.”

“You’re a gobshite. They’d have let you keep busking had you not been doing magic- you don’t look eighteen or anything close to it, and I know you don’t have your fake licence because my brother’s using it.”

“I’m eighteen in two months! And I don’t think it counts as busking unless someone actually gives you change, Sigyn. I was just having a laugh.”

“Good point. Although I see you could afford drink. Don’t supposed anyone’s checking IDs today,” she muses, making grabby hands at his bottle until he tilts the neck of it into her mouth and lets her take a swig.

“I got this off a stag party, actually. They’ve cursed the groom with his bride-to-be’s face for the weekend,” he snorts. “It’s equal parts hilarious and horrifying.”

She pulls a face. “That’s a bit uncanny valley. Hope she’s pretty, at least.”

“Eh. Solid five out of ten.”

“Everyone’s a critic. You’re no vision yourself.”

“I’m the next Rose of Tralee,” he protests, and pulls his bottle back. “No more drink for Sparrow. I don’t share with the likes of you.”

“I just spent, like, almost all of my data plan sending you that spell. My Mam’ll murder me if I go over again. And you can’t even give me a drink?”

“It’s for the good of your soul. You don’t want to face St Peter with an underage drinking charge. Or,” he clicks his tongue. “A drunk and disorderly, even. I keep forgetting you’re eighteen.”

“You were at the party. Ah, whatever. Come on, let’s find somewhere to get food, I’m starving.”

She links her arm with his and they meander towards the food halls, chattering idly. They buy chicken fillet rolls and cans of Coke for two euro, spike their drinks with the naggin of cheap vodka Sigyn had tucked away in her bra. Loki pulls a face.

“Eurgh. That’s vile. Anyway, let’s get the train home. Everyone’s been back for hours, I think they’re in the practice yards.”

He leads her up the street and through the gentle but firm force field that kept the road clear for the parade route. The floats have long since drifted by, and Loki's precocious enough to dispel the lingering energy with ease and tug them both safely through towards Tara Street train station.

The atmosphere has taken on an edge- a day filled with weary tolerance of underage drinking and semi-illegal magic has turned over to night-time, although the inky black of the sky doesn’t stay dark for long as drunks and junkies light the air with messy splashes of colour. It’s magic with no purpose, no neat Latin root or academic function. This is just street magic, scruffy and pointless and cheap as the chipped varnish of Sparrow’s nails. She loves it wholeheartedly, but the incantations are turning harsh and destructive as the late hours roll in. An ambulance wails in the distance, and the eyes she meets as she rushes by are hot with anticipation, with a lust for danger. She takes Loki’s hand and chatters away meaninglessly to stop him meeting those eyes, from taking up the challenges she knows he won’t try to resist. He tolerates it, eyes crinkling fondly as he smiles down at her.

“Let’s give the yards a miss, Loki, I’m wrecked. We can throw on a movie at mine.”

He wrinkles his nose. “That’s a bit sad. Not much in the Paddy’s Day spirit.”

“We can watch Finding Nemo.”

“Right, yours it is so. Will your Mam let me stay?” 

She will, and even if she wouldn’t they’d find a way to sneak him in. Neither of them is drunk, but they bemoan the unfairness of having to go into school tomorrow anyway as they shove their way onto the train. It lurches as it breaks away from the platform, and Sparrow is thrown forwards into her friend’s chest before she can cast her securing charm.

“Easy there, you loose woman! You’ll have to buy me dinner first before mauling me like that.”

She scoffs to hide her flush, and wraps her arms around his waist defiantly. “I bought you dinner just there, you gold digger.”

“Oh, right. Carry on, so.”

She lets herself for a minute, resisting the urge to rub her cheek against his hoodie because she knows she’ll leave streaks of foundation on it. She looks up at him and bats her eyelashes.

“He smelled of honeysuckle-“

“Tayto crisps-“

“And something uniquely himself,” they whisper together reverently. She giggles, and tries to push herself back into her own space, but he grabs her, turns her and holds her close.

“Where do you think you’re going? You’re warm.”

“Stop. Cuddling isn’t punk rock.”

He plants a horrible, smacking kiss in her hair and the woman to their left shoots them a disapproving glare.

The stations roll by like a cinema reel, spray painted concrete of the city soon giving way to the drab grey of suburban stations. They’re a good thirty minutes journey from the city centre, and they fill the time gossiping and joking and playing I-Spy. Loki turns the cranky woman’s hair blue as she disembarks, and Sigyn joins together the shapes she can pick out in the stars through the window with shimmering green lines. A little girl half-asleep in her mother’s arms laughs when she makes a duck, so she sends the illusion of it waddling across the aisle to peck at her tiny feet.

They’re the only ones to get off at their stop, and the air that greets them is chilly and silent.  
 

“It’s like we’re the last two people on Earth,” she sighs.

“Flirt.”

They weave their way through the familiar streets, hand in hand. Loki pulls up Spotify on his battered old Samsung wand and they sing along to terrible chart topping hits. He twirls and tries to dip her at the choruses.

“You sure you’re not drunk?” she laughs breathlessly.

“Only on you, my darling.”

“Jesus,“ she groans. He gives her his jacket against the cold to make up for it, and she savours the smell of body spray and boy that clings to it.

They cut through the park behind her house, kick away empty crisp packets and condom wrappers. They can hop the wall if they use a trampolining hex on the grass beside it- they’ve both spent years perfecting the motion until they can catch the rough brick of the ledge and haul themselves over with one go. Sparrow is preparing to do just that when Loki takes her by the elbows and spins her around, pinning her to the wall.

Her breath leaves her with a shocked gasp, her eyes snapping wide open. He leans in close, and he’s not tall but neither is she and so he still has to bend down to lean in. Her stomach churns itself sick, and she can’t tear her eyes away from his face. She doesn’t move a muscle, heart flinging itself against the wall of her chest, and he hooks his chin in the hollow of her shoulder to whisper in her ear.

“There’s a gnome behind us.”

She clenches her eyes shut and grinds her teeth. When she rises up on tiptoe to peek over his shoulder, she sees he wasn’t lying- a squat little creature with a potato nose and a cloud of hair has plonked itself onto the grass and begun picking at it’s toes.

“Did you think I was goin’ to kiss you?” he snorts.

She shoves at his chest hard and he goes reeling backwards, arms flailing to steal back his balance from the empty air. He’s still laughing. She grabs for her wand where she’d shoved it into the pocket of his hoodie, and squeezes the zipper until the teeth of it bite the fleshy palm of her hand. She wants to tell him to go to hell, or raise a bitchy eyebrow and a salient point about his own touchy-feely tendencies. She’s never been able to fool him though, never kept a clear head or a cool heart. The bastard knows it too, and it’s all she can do to trap the hot tears behind the dams of her eyelids and cast blindly at the grass.

“You’ll turn your wall into a bouncy castle with aim like that.”

“Please just go home, Loki. My Netflix isn’t working anyway.”

“Oh, well what else would I be wanting you for?”

What indeed.

“I was only joking, Sigga. Come on,” he grabs her shoulder, and she shoves him off again. “Sparrow. C’mere.”

She hates him.

She wishes she’d never gone out to him, wishes they’d headed out to some party, wishes their mothers had never decided to have them christened on the same day, sent them to the same schools, joked about whether Sparrow would be able to dye their children’s hair pink over Loki's defiant ginger.

“Sigyn!”

“Do you actually think that’s going to work, Loki? The full name thing? This isn’t a fucking fanfiction, and if you want to be a prick then you can be one far away from me.”

“I don’t read fanfiction you freak, I'm only trying to get your attention!” he huffs petulantly, like _she’s_ the one who’s in the wrong. She’s had enough of the dramatic facing away from him though, so she swallows her mortification and her tears and turns to look at him.

“You’ve got it. So, what?”

“The gnome-“

“I don’t care about the bloody gnome!”

“Here now, he’s got feelings!”

The gnome in question has begun chewing on his toenails, and looks utterly disinterested in Sigyn’s opinion of him.

Loki seizes the opportunity. Quick as lightening, he grabs the back of her neck and leans in. Before she can move, or bite him, he’s pressed his lips to hers and flung himself back with a triumphant expression.

She’s so angry that flames begin to crackle in her hair, an ability leftover from when she had coloured it red. She’d changed it for fear of people accusing her of trying to match _him_.

“I’m going to fucking _murder_ you-“ 

“I thought you wanted me to kiss you!”

“Loki-“

“Sparrow, I’m trying to be bloody romantic and you’re really raining on my parade here.”

“Will you just _stop_!” she yells, and she’s really crying now. “Why do you have to wreck everything?”

Something hurt flashes briefly across his handsome face, and she can feel something breaking between them. His dark eyes are unbearably hard, the dimple on the top of his left cheek disappearing as his expression smooths out. She can taste tears and mascara pooling on her painted lips, and sees a hint of answering gloss on his cupid’s bow.

Silence falls. She scuffs at the grass with her boots.

“Sorry. Mea culpa.”

She actually has to look around to make sure that came from him. Loki never apologises, never makes his voice so soft unless he’s crooning out love songs on Grafton Street. She really wishes he’d hug her, really wishes he’d take a swan dive off a cliff and never bother her again.

“You should be,” she sniffles, sounding utterly pathetic. His mouth twitches, but when she opens her own mouth to reprimand him all that comes out is a slightly hysterical giggle. The last thing she can make out before her eyes refill with tears is his faintly worried face- then she’s too busy howling and gasping with tears or laughter or a mixture of both.

“You’re some special kind of prick,” she splutters, clutching at her stomach and trying to herself from crying. “What’s wrong with you?”

“So many things,” he mutters, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing. She should push him away, but she really doesn’t want to. “Can we still watch Finding Nemo?”

It takes her a while to calm down, and when she does she’s left bone tired. All she wants is a blanket, a cup of tea and a night in front of the telly. It’s been ages since he asked, but when she nods he knows exactly what she’s referring to. “Yeah, come on.”

It takes him two tries to hop the wall.

 

* * *

 

 

When he kisses her properly, he tastes like sugary tea and chocolate digestives. She upends the biscuit tin over his head.


End file.
